Boels-Dolmans motivated to take last world TTT title

17 September 2018

Boels-Dolmans Cycling Team is proud to reveal its line-up for the last World Team Time Trial Championships in its current form. With a strong squad to line up in Austria, the team is motivated to take back the world title and crown itself the world TTT champions once more.

Luxembourg champion Christine Majerus and former Canadian time trial champion Karol-Ann Canuel are two fine time trialists and powerful pacers, along with Chantal Blaak and Anna van der Breggen. Amy Pieters and Amalie Dideriksen are relatively new in the team time trial line-up, but have proven this season to be strong assets in the discipline.

The race

The women’s team time trial teams kick off the World Road Championships on Sunday 23 September. The first team rolls off the start ramp at 10.10am CET. A start order and start times are yet to be confirmed, we will share on our social media channels once available.

The 54.5-kilometer course is downhill overall, with only 152 altitude meters spread along the course. The first short climb comes right after the start, which is situated just east of Imst, with the finish in the city centre of Innsbruck.

“I haven’t seen the course yet, but I heard it isn’t technical and pretty flat,” Canuel said. “It’s really different than last year’s course in Norway. I think it will be to set up a fast speed and keep six riders as long as possible.”

Boels-Dolmans Cycling Team has been steadily growing towards the world TTT title over the course of the years, finally taking gold in Qatar in 2016. Last year, only twelve seconds separated the team from gold, taking silver behind Team Sunweb. Going into the 2018 worlds TTT, Canuel is not focusing on potential competitor teams.

“I don’t like thinking about competitors for a team time trial,” said Canuel firmly. “You can only focus on yourself and on the team and do the best to win. We don’t really control what the others are doing.”

With three wins to her name already, one with Boels-Dolmans and two with prior teams, Canuel is going up for her fourth world title in the discipline.

“It’s the last team time trial at Worlds and it’s for this reason I really want to win it so badly,” she said. “I really think we have the strongest team here and I think it would be so cool to finish the season off with the win.”

How to follow

The race is live to watch throughout the world. All of Europe can switch to Eurosport, while NOS and Sporza will also be broadcasting the race in the Netherlands and Belgium respectively. In North-America, Flobikes will provide images for Canadian viewers and NBC Sports broadcasts in the US.